Summary and Key Points: The invasion of Ukraine is uniquely Putin’s project — conceived, ordered, and justified by one man — raising a serious question: does the war end when he does?

-The 73-year-old has named no heir, and Russia has no reliable succession plan.

Putin in 2022. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

-The likeliest contenders, like hawkish ex-FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev, share Putin’s worldview and might continue the war.

-Yet a successor free of Putin’s personal stake could instead end it and blame the costs on him — making his exit the war’s biggest wildcard.

The number of homeless veterans decreased by only 387 people over the course of 2024, a smaller decrease than the change for the overall number of unhoused Americans, according to the newly released national homeless count.
On Friday, the Department of Housing and Urban Development released its findings from the 2025 point-in-time national homeless count. It found that overall homelessness in the United States dropped by 3%, with 745,652 people unhoused on a single night. However, veteran homelessness declined by just 1% between January 2024-January 2025, from 32,882 to 32,495.

This video describes the military situation in

Parenting already feels like organized chaos. Now add two military careers, four kids, competing duty schedules, and you’ve got the reality of a dual-military household.
But for one Army couple—a human resources officer entering her 13th year of service and a medical service officer in his 14th year—the chaos has somehow become a system. Not a perfect one. Not always a smooth one. But one built on communication, sacrifice, adaptability, and a whole lot of teamwork.
Also Read: No, kids are not getting dumber. Here’s the truth about the Gen Z intelligence study.

Summary and Key Points: On May 29, 2026, a Russian drone struck an apartment building in Galați, Romania, wounding two — the first time Russian weapons have caused casualties inside a NATO member state.

-It’s a warning, not a one-off: Russian incursions into NATO airspace tripled in 2025.

B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber Flying. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

-The danger is structural — under NATO’s Article 5, one mass-casualty strike could pull 32 nations toward war with a nuclear-armed Russia that has openly lowered its nuclear threshold.

Summary and Key Points: Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine was centered on armored columns racing toward Kyiv. Instead, Russian tanks became the war’s most destroyed weapon.

-Cheap FPV drones now routinely throw their turrets into the air — the “jack-in-the-box” effect — and the losses are staggering: Oryx confirms over 4,000 destroyed or captured, while Ukraine claims more than 10,000.

T-80 Tank from Russian Army. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

-Unable to build enough new tanks, Russia has resorted to pulling 70-year-old T-54s and T-55s from storage.

Summary and Key Points: Something shifted on the Russian side of the front line over the winter. After three years of feeding fresh recruits into Ukraine faster than they fell, Moscow crossed a line in late 2025 where the casualties began outpacing the sign-ups. The reversal is real, the consequences are mounting, and the Kremlin is scrambling to patch the gap without forcing the question it fears most. But a drained pool is not an empty one.

Putin Has a Manpower Problem in the Ukraine War That Might Not Be Fixable

Su-35 from China. Image Credit: Chinese Air Force PLAAF.

Military families are built tough, but some everyday habits are quietly burning them out. Here’s what’s really going on behind all that “we’re good” energy.
Military families don’t always fall apart dramatically like your favorite reality show. Most of the time, it looks like normal family behavior. Schedules handled. Kids fed. When asked how they are doing, the response is, “We’re good.”
Also Read: The invisible weight of loving a service member while protecting yourself
But if you’ve been in this life long enough, you know the truth.

Summary and Key Points: In June 2025’s Operation Midnight Hammer, seven B-2 stealth bombers flew a 36-hour, 12,000-mile round trip from Missouri to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities — a feat only American airpower can manage.

-The mission hinged on a vast aerial-refueling bridge, and six F-16 pilots who cleared the bombers’ path earned the Distinguished Flying Cross after flying out “on fumes.”

-Experts warn the Air Force’s aging KC-135 tankers — most over 60 years old — must be replaced to sustain that reach.
The U.S.

Summary and Key Points: A U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down over Iran in April — the first U.S. fighter downed by ground fire in decades. Many experts suspect the weapon was a Chinese-made shoulder-fired missile cued by a Chinese radar built to detect American jets, though no hard evidence has emerged, and the attribution remains far from definitive.

-Beijing denies supplying Iran, even after Xi Jinping assured President Trump it would send none. The shootdown has complicated fragile U.S.-Iran peace talks.

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy has commissioned a new Type 052D class destroyer, the Tongchuan, into service in the South China Sea. The warship is the 35th of its class to have become operational, which alongside ten Type 055 class destroyers provides the Navy with 45 destroyers of the latest generation.

It’s a trap!

This video describes the military situation in

Footage released on Chinese social media has shown a new type of next generation main battle tank closely related to the new Type 100 tank, which appears to be considerably larger and heavier. The Type 100 was unveiled in September 2025, and is the only next generation main battle tank currently in service. The appearance of the new larger vehicle has raised the possibility that China will field two next generation tank types in a complementary high-low combination before any other country can bring a single one into service.

Fast. Precise.

…money, action, inventory…

In spite of the rough lessons on the importance of mass in the Korean and Vietnam Wars in the second half of the 20th Century—and even the cold bucket of sand thrown in our face about what is required for even heavy imperial policing like we had in Iraq and Afghanistan at the end of the first decade of this century—a large segment of the national security nomenklatura was content with boutique-levels of warstocks in our relatively shallow magazines.

The Russian Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation (FSMTC) on May 30 confirmed that consultations remain underway for the production of Su-57 fifth generation fighter aircraft in India, following multiple reports that these talks have already reached advanced stages. “Russia is proposing to establish production of Su-57E aircraft in India.

A new weapons configuration for the Su-30SM long range fighter unveiled on May 28 has for the first time included Iranian glide bombs, marking the first time Iranian weaponry is known to have been integrated onto a post-Cold War Russian fighter type. The aircraft were operated by the Armenian Air Force, and flew over Yerevan’s Republic Square as part of a major military parade. The munitions in question appear to be Yasin class precision guided glide bombs, which allow the fighters to engage targets at beyond visual ranges at a small fraction of the cost of guided missiles.

The Republic of China Army has unveiled new the Hsuan-Chieh tactical electronic warfare vehicles, which were designed to support combined arms brigades, and provide a capability not only to jam enemy UHF/VHF military frequency communications, but also counter enemy electronic warfare jamming.

The M551 Sheridan was one of the U.S. Army’s most ambitious tanks: light enough to parachute onto a battlefield, able to swim rivers, and armed with a 152mm gun that fired both shells and the Shillelagh guided missile. Rushed into Vietnam in 1969, it proved fast and mobile, with HEAT rounds that shredded bunkers. But its thin aluminum hull was vulnerable to mines and RPGs, and its gun was unreliable. Retired in 1996, it was America’s last light tank.

Meet the M551 Sheridan

M551 Sheridan Light Tank. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

M551 Sheridan U.S. Army.

Summary and Key Points: Years before the famous SR-71 Blackbird, the CIA built the A-12 Oxcart — a top-secret Mach 3 spy plane designed by Kelly Johnson’s Skunk Works to replace the vulnerable U-2.

-First flown from Area 51 in 1962, the A-12 was America’s first stealth aircraft and hit a sustained Mach 3.2 at 90,000 feet, a piloted-jet record still unbroken. The Air Force’s SR-71 followed, carrying more sensors but flying a touch slower. The program ended in 1968.

Summary and Key Points: The B-47 Stratojet is one of the least-celebrated Cold War bombers — and one of the most influential.

-To build it, Boeing drew on captured German swept-wing research, pairing those wings with a cylindrical fuselage and podded jet engines.

B-47 Bomber. Image Credit: U.S. Air Force.

-That formula proved so sound it shaped the KC-135 tanker, the Boeing 707, and nearly every airliner since, from the 737 to Airbus.

-The B-47 was fast but flawed — six crashed in four days from metal fatigue — and retired by 1966.
The B-47 Bomber from the U.S.

Summary and Key Points: In 1983, the USS Enterprise — the world’s first nuclear-powered carrier — was returning from a Pacific deployment when it ran aground on a sandbar in San Francisco Bay, just 1,000 yards from its berth.

-Some 4,500 sailors and 3,000 waiting families were left stranded in sight of one another.

USS Enterprise. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

-Adding to the irony, Star Trek’s George Takei had flown out to welcome the crew, joking about “Enterprise on the Rocks.” Tugboats and the tide freed it after six hours.

Summary and Key Points: The USS America (CV-66), a Kitty Hawk-class aircraft carrier, served the Navy for 30 years — through Vietnam, the 1986 Libya strikes, and Desert Storm — without ever losing an aircraft to enemy fire.

-Her final mission was unusual: in 2005, the Navy used the decommissioned carrier as a live-fire “SinkEx” target to build tougher future ships.

A Fighter Squadron 101 (VF-101) F-4J Phantom II aircraft taxis on the flight deck of the attack aircraft carrier USS AMERICA (CVA 66).

An American aircraft fired a Hellfire missile into a cargo ship’s engine room on Friday, disabling the vessel after it tried to break the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
U.S. Central Command said on Saturday that the military took action against the Gambia-flagged M/V Lian Star after it tried sailing through the Gulf of Oman towards an Iranian port on May 29.
It’s the fifth time since early April that U.S. forces have directly fired on a ship to disable it as part of enforcing the blockade. The U.S.

This video describes the military situation in

Eleven months after they escorted B-2 Spirit stealth bombers into Iran, airmen from the 34th Fighter Squadron were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for their part in the June 2025 strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.
Six airmen from the 34th Fighter Squadron received Distinguished Flying Crosses, the Air Force’s highest honor for valor during flight against an enemy, for actions covering last summer’s Operation Midnight Hammer as well as last spring’s fight against Houthi forces in Yemen. The squadron, flying F-35As, deployed to the Middle East in early 2025 for several months.
Lt.

Summary and Key Points: On June 23, 2023, Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group — a private army the Kremlin itself had built — seized the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and drove toward Moscow, halting just over 120 miles away.

-For one stunning day, Putin’s vaunted security state could not stop an armed challenge on its own soil. Rather than crush the mutiny, Putin cut a deal. The march exposed his grip as a bluff — and proved a coup in Russia, once unthinkable, is no longer.

Putin Speaking in 2025. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Summary and Key Points: Russia’s war on Ukraine is devouring its finances. War spending now totals 16.8 trillion roubles ($238 billion) — nearly 40% of the entire 2026 budget — and Putin’s own finance minister, Anton Siluanov, has privately warned of a possible economic collapse, urging deep cuts to avert it.

-The deficit is the largest since the 2022 invasion, growth has flatlined at 0.4%, and analysts say Moscow is faking its books.

Challenger 2 Tank. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Challenger 2 Tank. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Ask a civilian what the hardest part of military life is, and they’ll probably say deployments. Long separations, missed birthdays, the whole Hollywood version of sacrifice.
Ask a military spouse?
You’ll get a different answer. And it’s not always the one people expect.
Also Read: Why military kids overseas have to outwork everyone to get recruited
When I asked a group of military spouses to share their biggest struggle, the responses weren’t about one specific moment. They were about something deeper. Something quieter.

Summary and Key Points: Lockheed’s S-3 Viking — nicknamed “the Hoover” for its vacuum-like whine — spent 35 years as the U.S. Navy’s carrier-based submarine hunter, yet never sank a single sub. It hardly mattered.

-The versatile jet flew anti-submarine, surveillance, attack, and refueling missions, even destroying an Iraqi missile site in the 1991 Gulf War, and carried nuclear weapons in its bomb bay.

An aerial stern-on view of the Russian Northern Fleet AKULA class nuclear-powered attack submarine underway on the surface. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Summary and Key Points: Boeing once floated one of the era’s wildest aircraft concepts: the B-1R, a version of the B-1 Lancer bomber reimagined as the world’s largest air-superiority fighter. The plan swapped the Bone’s engines for the F-22 Raptor’s F119s, pushing its top speed to Mach 2.2, and added air-to-air missiles atop its enormous bomb load. Australia, having retired its F-111s amid rising tensions with China, was eyed as a buyer. The B-1R never flew — but the B-21 may one day inherit its mission.

U.S.

Summary and Key Points: Northrop’s F-89 Scorpion holds two firsts: it was the first purpose-built jet interceptor in U.S. service and the first warplane to carry a nuclear air-to-air weapon, the Genie rocket. But it earned a rocky reputation.

-In 1952, an F-89 broke apart over a Detroit airshow crowd of 51,000, killing both crewmen. In 1956’s “Battle of Palmdale,” two Scorpions fired 208 rockets at a drone over Los Angeles and missed every time. The jet flew on until 1969.

Summary and Key Points: The Montana-class would have been the most powerful battleship the United States ever built — bigger, better-armored, and more heavily armed than the legendary Iowa class.

-Each of the five planned ships would have carried twelve 16-inch guns — a quarter more firepower than the Iowa — behind armor thick enough to survive its own shells.

Montana-Class Battleship. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

-But the Navy canceled all five during World War II to build aircraft carriers instead. No keel was ever laid; the battleship era was ending.

This video describes the military situation in

Summary and Key Points: Ukraine will never get the 1945 image of total victory, and it cannot retake Crimea and the Donbas by force.

-But Russia invaded to erase Ukraine entirely, and against that aim, a free, armed, prosperous nation is a Russian defeat.

T-90M from Russia. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

-Here are five ways Ukraine wins the war that actually matters: a defended line, real security guarantees, a military powerhouse, the sovereign right to join Europe, and reconstruction into lasting prosperity.

Summary and Key Points: America’s network of major bases across Asia — its biggest bet for deterring China — now sits within range of Beijing’s vast missile, drone, and hypersonic arsenal, which dwarfs anything Iran fielded in the recent war.

-Key sites like Guam remain lightly hardened, and analysts, including Hudson’s “Concrete Sky” report, warn that shelters are too few.

Aircraft from the 1st Fighter Wing conducted an Elephant Walk at Langley Air Force Base, Jan. 31, 2025, showcasing the wing’s readiness and operational agility.

Summary and Key Points: Designed to replace the legendary M1 Garand, the M14 rifle entered service in 1957 — and quickly earned a brutal nickname.

-GIs called it “the anti-aircraft rifle” because it climbed almost uncontrollably on full-auto.

160509-N-IX266-013 SOUTH CHINA SEA—Civilian mariner Terrence P. Dumas, fire marshal on the fleet replenishment oiler USNS John Ericsson (T-AO 194) fires an M14 service rifle during a small-arms weapons qualification course here, May 5. (U.S. Navy photo by Grady T.

Last year, National Security Journal traveled to see both of the two Boeing X-32 aircraft that still exist. One sits indoors in the Research and Development gallery at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. The other sits outdoors on the flight line at the Patuxent River Naval Air Museum in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, where the salt air and the sun have not been kind to it. We have photos and video of both airframes, and they appear throughout this article.

Summary and Key Points: Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, a striking number of Russian elites — oil executives, bankers, officials, and Kremlin critics — have died in falls from windows, balconies, and rooftops.

-They include Lukoil chairman Ravil Maganov, who fell from a Moscow hospital window weeks after his company urged peace, and a Transneft executive who fell from a 17th-floor window in 2025.

Putin Looking Grim. Image Credit: Russian Federation

-Most were ruled suicides or accidents, and proof of foul play is scarce.

-But the pattern keeps growing.

Summary and Key Points: Battered by a country smaller in every metric — GDP, population, land, and army — Russia is in no shape to take on NATO, even as Europe worries Putin might test the alliance.

-Ukraine inflicted more than 35,000 casualties in April alone, roughly erasing Russia’s fresh recruits for the month, and Putin can’t order a broader mobilization without risking dangerous unrest at home.

MiG-29 Fighter U.S. Air Force Museum July 2025. Image Credit: National Security Journal.

-As one Baltic spy chief put it, problems inside Russia “are starting to pile up.

A growing set of problems with Russia’s war in Ukraine may be pushing the Kremlin to launch a serious escalation of its military effort. This deteriorating situation in the Ukraine war is causing an increasing unraveling of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s long-vaunted image of wise and unparalleled effective leadership.

No small measure of that unraveling is due to the Ukraine military’s apparent ability to hit any target, any arms factory, any oil refinery – even the city of Moscow itself. It is a poisonous combination for the former KGB Lt. Col.

Evan A. Laksmana, et al.

Blake Hunnewell, Military Strategy Magazine
Lessons for Strategic Leadership, Strategy, and Statesmanship Today

Journal of Strategic Studies
During the 2025 Victory Day Parade in September, China unveiled a ballistic missile defence system capable of intercepting missiles in the midcourse phase for…

Defense Post
The U.S.

CDR Salamander
…if this is all you have…

Battle of the ration packs🍴🆚
Following Na

Operations by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy’s aircraft Liaoning and its carrier task force are currently playing a significant role in expanding group training toward far-sea combat application, providing experience in forming system-of-systems combat capabilities at very distant locations in ways that have significant implications for the future balance of power in the Pacific. The carrier group was announced to be beginning training in the region on May 19, with a series of comprehensive exercises currently being carried out.

This video describes the military situation in